


Take Care

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Chloe & Rush friendship, F/M, a Rush/Chloe/Gloria bromance, discussion of death and terminal illness, possible pre-romance, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-30 08:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6416872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rush goes missing for slightly too long and the crew become even more suspicious than they already are, the search for him is cut short by reports from Greer that there is an intruder on the ship. He’s not entirely wrong, but when Chloe recognises their mysterious visitor as Gloria, one person who could definitely, absolutely not ever be on Destiny, things take a turn for the interesting. Is this Destiny testing them again, or is this a cry for help?</p><p>Set between <em>Trial and Error</em> and <em>The Greater Good</em> and diverges from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly can’t tell from the episodes whether Rush was absent when Gloria actually passed away or whether he wasn’t there for her _dying_ but was there at the ultimate final moment. I can’t piece it together, I think there are arguments both ways, so I’ve tried to keep it vague.
> 
> Anyhow - my first SGU fic since finishing watching the series. Enjoy!
> 
> 01/04/2016: Edit because my brain rebels against continuity.

“You need to sleep, Nicholas.”

Nick puts down his notebook and pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off the rapidly oncoming headache. Closing his eyes, he sighs; it feels like he’s going through caffeine and nicotine withdrawal all over again.

“I know,” he replies to Gloria through gritted teeth. “So you keep reminding me. Now if you’ve got nothing better to do, can you please go away and let Franklin come back, because he’s actually useful.”

He looks up but Gloria is still there beside him, smiling her calm smile, and he sighs. She shrugs.

“I don’t control this, Nicholas. You’re the one in charge here.”

“Then why can’t I get rid of you?”

“Because I think, deep down, you want me to stay. You like having me to say all the obvious things for you because it almost makes it seem like you don’t have to do it yourself then. You can leave the ethics to me and concentrate on the science. I already told you, Nicholas, I’m not your conscience.”

“I’d rather not be reminded of that particular adventure, thank you,” Nick mutters.

“Even though ultimately, it brought you here?”

He looks over at her sharply.

“Every time I remember that moment, I remember how much I failed you.”

He doesn’t see the moment that Gloria’s expression changes; he never really sees her move much, but one second she’s smiling wanly and the next she looks sad and hurt, the same expression he knows was on her face during those final few days when he wasn’t there.

“I would have thought that was a small sacrifice in the greater scheme of things,” she says quietly. “Especially for you.”

Nick leans back in his chair and presses his hands over his face. He’s tired, he’s stressed, he can’t keep the bridge a secret forever and he can’t afford to spend time crying over Gloria right now.

“Don’t you see?” he says. “That’s the entire reason why I have to do this. I have to crack this, I have to succeed, because if I don’t, then it will all have been for nothing. It will all mean nothing. Me leaving you alone whilst you were dying will have been for nothing. No higher purpose, no greater good, no amazing discovery. Just a cruel man too busy working to take care of his dying wife.”

“You’re not cruel, Nicholas. You are a lot of things, not all of them good or pleasant, but you are not cruel.”

Nick shakes his head. “You can’t possibly know that.”

There’s no reply, and Nick startles as he feels hands come down gently on his shoulders.

“Is that you, Gloria?” he asks.

“You can hear and see me yet you doubt touch,” her voice says.

“I’ve never had a tactile hallucination before.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

“I’m quite certain that you’re not the result of an alien tick. You’re either Destiny playing games with me or me going slowly insane.”

“Which do you think it is? Destiny’s played with Colonel Young already, after all.”

One of Gloria’s hands is stroking his hair, brushing it back from his temple and behind his ear. There’s something comforting in the movement.

“You used to do it to me when I was in hospital,” Gloria says. “So, are you insane or is Destiny playing with you?”

Nick doesn’t respond for a long time but then finally speaks: “I don’t know.”

All is quiet, and if it wasn’t for Gloria’s soft touch soothing his aching head, then Nick would be convinced that she had gone.

“Do you remember the first time I was admitted for my first course of treatment?” she asks presently.

Nick sighs. “Obviously, or you wouldn’t remember it either.”

“Do you remember how ill it made me? You were there the whole time. You sat on my bed grading papers whilst I was asleep, and you held my hair every time I was sick, even when clumps of it started coming out in your hands.”

“I remember. I don’t want to, but I do. What’s the point of this, exactly?”

Gloria ignores his question and presses on.

“There was that horrible nurse who told you to stop sitting on the bed. So you got off it, but as soon as she was gone, you got back up and lay down beside me, even though it was such a narrow bed, and you just held me. I fell asleep in your arms and when the nurse came back, you said…”

“I’m not sitting on it.” In spite of it all, Nick smiles. “And she left us alone.”

“That was the best sleep I ever had in hospital,” Gloria says conversationally.

“I know. You told me.”

They fall into silence again and Nick finds himself leaning into Gloria’s touch. His mind is screaming at him that this isn’t getting any work done, but he just can’t bring himself to open his eyes.

“Do you remember the first time we made love after I finished treatment?” Gloria asks after a while, and Nick sighs again.

“Of course I do, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking about it. Again, how is that at all relevant right now?”

“You were so gentle.”

“You’d been through enough already. I didn’t want to hurt you. Gloria, why are we talking about this? How is this helping my current predicament?”

“I’m just reminding you.”

“Of what? Things I’d rather forget?”

“Whether you want to forget them or not is a discussion for another time, but no. Reminding you about the man you were when I was there. You’re still the same person, Nicholas. That man’s still there, somewhere inside you, pushed down deep under all the layers of guilt and hardness and grief. You can still be kind and gentle, you still have that capacity. You just choose to ignore it. You still care, even though you tell yourself that you don’t.”

“I don’t have you,” Nick says. “I may have all that, but if I don’t have you then what’s the point?”

“I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“Yes, and you’re not helping.”

“I think I am.”

“Whatever makes you think that?”

“It’s been over ten minutes since you last told me to go away and bring Franklin back,” Gloria says. If Nick didn’t know better, then he’d say that she sounds smug.

“Go away and bring Franklin back,” he snaps, but it’s half-hearted and he knows it. For all he’s not a tactile person, he knows that Gloria’s hands were always the exception to that, and he reaches up to take her fingers. They feel as real and solid as they should, not a simulation, and Nick doesn’t want to let go.

“You’re not really here,” he says.

“Of course I’m not, but why should that make a difference?”

He brings her hand around and kisses her palm.

“I’m tired, Gloria.”

“I’ve been telling you to go to bed for the past fourteen hours.”

“I don’t have time for these kind of games.”

“You have time to sleep.”

“Sleep can wait. Destiny can’t.”

“Destiny has been waiting for thousands of years, Nicholas.” Gloria sounds amused. “It can wait a little longer. It’s a ship. You’re a human. You need sleep. It doesn’t.”

He’s so tired, but he knows he has to press on, there’s only so much time before his deception is revealed and he won’t have any more time to try and figure things out on his own then. A process that would go a lot quicker if Gloria would stop distracting him.

“You’re working yourself to death, Nicholas.”

“I’m fine.”

“Would I be saying these things if you were fine?”

“Fair point. You can say them, but I can ignore them.”

“And you putting yourself into an early grave from exhaustion isn’t failing in your self-appointed task and failing me at all.”

Nick starts up out of his chair and turns to face Gloria, still standing calmly behind him, one hand raised where he had been holding it.

“What do you want, Gloria?” he exclaims. “Why are you here?”

“Only you can answer that one, Nicholas,” she says. “The real question is what do _you_ want, and why am I here?”

Nick doesn’t know. All he knows is that it’s driving him mad, the constant reminders of Gloria and how much he misses her, and how much he did wrong.

“I want you to leave me alone.”

Gloria shakes her head.

“I’m not in charge here, Nicholas.”

“I can’t.” Nick sighs. “I miss you so much, Gloria. Maybe you don’t think that I do, and I know that’s something Destiny will never be able to tell me, but I do, and that’s why having you here is so…”

“Distracting.”

“Yes. And…”

“Yes?”

“Heartbreaking.”

Nick crumples in on himself, howling with sorrow, and Gloria looks on.

X

“Well, he’s not drawing on the walls,” Volker says as he comes back into the control interface room.

“I’ve checked his quarters and the mess too, no luck,” Park adds.

Brody raises his eyes to heaven and lets out a frustrated exclamation.

“Where the hell is he?”

“Where the hell is who, as if I couldn’t guess?” Unfortunately for the science team, Colonel Young chooses that exact moment to enter the room.

“Rush has vanished, again,” Brody says. “And as usual, it’s when something strange has just happened on one of the systems. I don’t know what he’s doing but I don’t think I’m being paranoid when I say he’s doing _something_.”

Young looks around at the rest of the science team, who all nod in reluctant agreement, and he sighs and reaches for his radio.

“Lieutenant Scott, this is Colonel Young, come in please.”

_“I’m here, Colonel.”_

“Yes, well, Rush isn’t. I need you and Greer to put a team together and find the man. This is getting ridiculous now.”

_“Will do, Sir.”_

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Young out.”

Young rubs his forehead and wonders what in the world the scientist could be doing before going over to Eli.

“So what have you got?”

“We don’t know, that’s the entire point. We’ve seen a huge energy spike in Destiny’s processing power, but we can’t seem to pin point where it’s coming from. It’s not doing anything, it just _is_.”

“Is there any way of getting a location?”

“Well, I can try, but since we don’t really know which systems it’s affecting at the moment, it could be anywhere. It could be all over the ship…” Eli tails off under the Colonel’s gaze. “I’ll get on it.”

_“Colonel, come in please."_

Young sighs and speaks into his radio. 

"Come in, Sergeant."

_"Sir, we've got a situation down here."_

"Have you found Rush?" 

_"No sir, but we have an alien intruder on the ship."_

"What?"

_"Sir, we have an alien intruder on the ship."_

Everyone in the control interface room is looking expectantly at him, and Young turns to Eli. "Get a kino down there now."

"Already on it." 

Young speaks into his radio again: "Sergeant, tell me exactly where you are and what you can see."

Greer gives his location, at the entrance to an unexplored area of the ship that they haven't been able to unlock, and there's a pause.

_"If I didn't know better, I'd say she was one of our own civilians, Colonel, but I've never seen her before."_

_"Colonel, this is Scott, we're on our way to Greer's position now."_

"Copy that, Lieutenant. Greer, what's she doing?"

_"Nothing, Sir. That's what's bugging me. She's just standing there. She's not doing anything. I don't even know if she can hear us."_

"Hallucination?" Brody suggests, and he shrugs. "It's happened before."

Young ponders for a moment, his brow furrowed, then he speaks into his radio again. "Sergeant, you and your team can all see the same thing?"

_"Affirmative, Colonel."_

_"Colonel, this is Scott, we're here and we can see her too. She doesn't appear to be hostile or indeed responsive."_

"Surely a hallucination would only affect one person," Park says. "Or affect everyone differently."

"Destiny running a simulation?" Brody suggests. "It's happened before," he repeats, giving Young a slightly apologetic look. 

Eli shakes his head. "No, we'd be able to see if Destiny was running the program."

"You said there was a power spike you couldn't identify," Young points out. 

"Yes, well, it could be that, but there's like, a thousand other things it could be as well. Don't tell me, I'm working on it." He looks over at another screen. "Kino's there, and, yeah, she's definitely there."

Young, Park, Volker and Brody all crowd around the screen and look at their intruder. To all intents and purposes she's an ordinary civilian, just standing there calmly at the entrance to the blocked off area, making no move to try and get away or try to get through the door.

 _"Colonel, what are your orders?"_   Scott presses. 

"Do not engage, we have no idea what we're dealing with. Stay where you are, I'm coming down."

 _"Erm, Colonel, she just vanished."_ Although never normally fazed by the things they see in space, Scott sounds distinctly worried.

"Vanished?"

Eli nods and indicates the kino feed - their intruder has indeed disappeared.

Young sighs for the umpteenth time and exits the room, and the science team look at each other, a little shaken. Normally this is where they would expect Rush to turn up in the nick of time and set everything to rights with that knack he has of knowing exactly when he's needed. But Rush doesn't turn up, he's still not responding to his radio, and Eli is starting to get a little bit concerned that this strange... thing, whatever it is, has abducted him. He wonders whether this is a good or a bad thing. 

Suddenly, the console beeps.

"Colonel, I've got the source of that power spike," Eli says into the radio. "It's pretty much where she is. Was. Whatever."

_"Copy, Eli."_

"Hang on, it's moving..."

_"Where is it now?"_

"Holy Hell!"

Brody jumps about three feet in the air with a squawk of alarm and everyone follows his eye line over to the entrance to the room. She's there. Whereas before, down in the corridor, she had a neutral expression, unresponsive, now she looks worried. 

"Erm, Colonel, it's here."

 _"Colonel, could this be some kind of trick?"_ Greer asks over the radio. _"To get us all split up and get into the control interface room?"_

Park is the first to recover from the shock and walks calmly towards the woman, tentatively stretching out a hand towards her. 

"Lisa, are you mad?" Volker exclaims.

The intruder doesn't react, and Park inches closer, until her fingers meet the other woman.

And go straight through. 

"Colonel, she's a hologram or simulation or hallucination or ghost or I don't know what, but whatever she is, she's got no physical form," Eli reports. 

And then, as quickly as she arrived, she flickers and vanishes. 

"She's gone."

 _"Yeah, she's back here,"_ Scott says. _"Oh, no, wait, gone again."_

There's silence for a few minutes and then the radio chatter crackles into life again. 

_"Colonel, this is Dunning, Chloe says she needs to see you right now."_

_"I'm in the middle of a situation here, Dunning."_

_"Yes, that's what she wants to see you about. She says she knows who the intruder is."_

_"What? How can she possibly..."_

"Erm, Colonel," Eli interrupts, "the power spike is showing as in Chloe's quarters now."

_"I don't understand. Stand by, Dunning, I'm on my way."_

_"It's ok, Colonel, I'm here,"_ says Chloe's voice into Dunning's radio. _"I know who she is."_

_"Who is she, Chloe?"_

_"She's Gloria Rush. Dr Rush's wife."_

"What?" The entire science team look at each other. 

"Did you know..." Brody begins. 

Volker shakes his head and Park rolls her eyes. 

"Boys, he wore a wedding ring."

 _"Colonel, she's been dead for three years,"_ Chloe adds. 

The science team look at each other again and Eli picks up the radio.

"Erm, Chloe, no offence, but... how do you know all this?"

 _"After the aliens."_ Chloe's voice is quiet and restrained _. "We ended up talking a lot."_

There's something else, something she's not letting on, but that's all they're going to get for the moment, and it's enough. 

 _"Right."_ Young sounds completely out of his depth. 

 _"Colonel, she's back here,"_ Scott says. 

Eli starts pressing buttons on his console frantically. "Goddammit Rush, where are you and why the hell is the ghost of your wife haunting Destiny all of a sudden?"

"Do you think that he's trying to bring her back to life?" Park ponders. "I mean, that would explain where he keeps disappearing."

Everyone gives her an incredulous look. "It's a suggestion!" she exclaims. "I can't explain this any more than you can!"

"Maybe she's trying to communicate?" Volker suggests. 

"Maybe..." Eli has his focussed look on. "Ok, if it was a simulation that Destiny was running of its own accord then we'd be able to see the program running and it would only be affecting one person. But what if this is a simulation that Destiny's running, but it's affecting more than one person because... it needs to affect more than one, I don't know, still figuring out how the last one worked. And it's not showing up as a specific program because it's so widespread, it just shows up as a power spike."

Park, Brody and Volker all look at him and look at each other, shrugging. It's as good an explanation as any for them.

"But why Gloria?" Volker presses. "It's not like any of us ever met her, and I doubt anyone else on the ship recognises her."

"Well, one person would, wouldn't they?" Brody says. "The one person who's not here."

"Maybe that's the whole point," Eli says. "Maybe this is Destiny's way of telling us that Rush is in some kind of trouble. If the simulation feeds off his brainwaves, then it would feed off what he was thinking about subconsciously and that would feed into the simulation. So if he's thinking about Gloria then she's what Destiny is showing us." 

"Maybe it would help if she would actually say something," Volker says mildly.

"I think the program's stretched too thin to do anything other than just be there." Eli's still pressing buttons as if his life depends on it. Maybe it does. "If she was only appearing to one person then they'd probably be able to have an entire philosophical conversation with her."

"This isn't exactly helping us find Rush," Brody points out.

"Yep, well, I had a thought about that." Eli taps the console, pointing to Gloria and the locked door she's next to. "We need to get through that door."


	2. Chapter 2

Chloe remembers the dream. She had wondered for a long time if she and Rush were somehow connected, since the nightmares always seemed to come at the same time for both of them. Well, almost the same time. Chloe has them more often simply because she sleeps more often. But whenever there's a particularly vivid one, one that she felt was so very, very real, she would always wake up and wander the halls to find Rush in the mess or the observation deck. The same dream. She remembers the dream that led to the revelation.

_Normally, she dreams about her mother being the one to watch her through the glass as she drowns in the tank. Occasionally her father. On the nights she and Rush are in sync, she dreams that she's the alien, her hands blue and shining and cold as they curl around the scalpel and Rush screams himself unconscious._

_But this dream is different. She's drowning, but the face watching her is completely unknown to her._

_So if it's unknown to her, that must mean it's known to Rush._

_It takes her a long time to find him that night. He's curled up on himself in the very corner of the observation deck, almost unnoticeable, staring at a dog-eared photograph._

_"Rush..."_

_"My wife," he says without asking, and Chloe can see that the hand holding the photograph is shaking. The revelation that he's married is a sudden one that stops her in her tracks, and she wonders why she didn't know before. Maybe because she was so angry she didn't think that anyone in the universe could ever have loved him._

_Chloe goes over and sits down beside him. They don't say anything for a long time._

_"May I?" she eventually asks, nodding towards the paper. He hands it over without a word._

_He looks so happy. That's the thing that strikes her the most. He looks so happy and carefree and in love. She shifts her gaze from him to her, the woman from her dream. Their dream._

_"She's lovely. What's her name?"_

_"Gloria."_

_There's resounding silence again, and this time, unlike all the other times they've spent sitting here in silence, it's screamingly awkward._

_"Do you miss her?" Chloe asks._

_Rush just gives her a withering look._

_"I'll take that as a yes," she mutters._

_There's a long, long pause before Rush speaks again._

_"It's nearly the third anniversary. I won't be able to give her lilies."_

_"There's the stones," Chloe suggests._

_"It's not the same, in someone else's body. Besides, she's buried at home, in Oxford. I don't think the IOA would be too pleased with me taking off on a transatlantic grave visit when they could be shouting at me."_

_Oh. Oh. Oh no._

_Suddenly, so much about Rush is explained, and yet he's still just as much of an enigma as usual._

_"I'm sorry," she says eventually. Rush shakes his head._

_"Not as sorry as I am."_

_He never leaves her alone when they've had these dreams, he always waits until she's gone back to bed before he moves, but tonight Chloe can tell that he's itching to get out of the situation, so even though she's still shaken and wants to remain in his safe presence for longer, she gets up and stretches._

_"I think I'll head back," she says, and pauses. He doesn't look up. "Thank you. For telling me."_

_Rush just nods, deep in his own thoughts._

Back in the present, Chloe wonders what's going on and why Gloria is appearing all over the ship. Thinking about it logically, it doesn't make sense. Why Gloria, of all people? And why isn't she doing anything? Leaving science aside, however, she's got a theory. Destiny is clever, they all know that much. It knows them, it gets in their heads. It knew that Young was faltering and forced him to step up. The ship they are on is practically sentient. Rush knows Destiny better than any of them, and given the amount of time he spent in that chair trying to crack the master code, Destiny probably knows Rush better than any of the rest of the crew. That a strange sort of relationship has formed between the two is hardly surprising. Destiny knows Gloria's importance to their scientist even if no one else does.

It makes sense that Gloria would appear to Rush. That would be logical. That she is appearing to other people means only one thing in Chloe's mind - for whatever reason, likely not a good one, Rush can't see her at the moment.

Well, perhaps he can see her, but he can't _use_  her. He can't interact with the simulation. Given Rush's past track record, he's probably passed out somewhere from sheer exhaustion. It wouldn't be the first time. He can keep going for ridiculously long periods of time, Chloe knows that. Again, she remembers the many nights she's woken in a cold sweat and padded through the empty corridors to find him still awake, pressing buttons or making notes or scrawling on his thinking wall, as she's come to call it. She knows he can stay awake, and she knows that when he crashes, he crashes hard. Perhaps this time he's crashed a little bit too hard, and this is Destiny's attempt to alert someone, anyone, to his plight.

The memory of the nightmares makes her shiver again. They've been coming more and more frequently now, as the silvery-blue lesions grow over her skin and her transformation shows no signs of relenting. She misses having an understanding partner in insomnia now that she can no longer come and go as she pleases. She wonders how Rush is getting on with the dreams. Maybe this is the reason why he's collapsed somewhere now.

Chloe's still hovering in the doorway to her quarters with Dunning, listening in on the radio chatter and Eli's frantic tracking of the literal ghost in the machine, of everyone else's frantic attempts to find Rush, and Volker and Brody's frantic attempts to unlock that particular section of the ship where Gloria first appeared.

Suddenly, everything goes quiet, and she and Dunning look at each other.

"Status report," Young says over the radio.

"It's gone," Eli replies. He sounds perplexed. "The spike. It's vanished. As suddenly as it appeared, it's just disappeared again."

The chatter continues for a few more minutes, but it seems clear that the excitement is over. Everyone is still on alert, but their focus once more shifts to finding Rush, the initial object of the exercise before this unexpected interlude. Despite all the running around the ship, he still hasn't surfaced. With a little reluctance, Chloe goes back into her room and Dunning closes the door behind her, promising to fill her in on any new developments he hears about (although he does mutter that no-one ever tells him anything).

As she turns to the window, however, she stops in her tracks. Gloria is there. Her form is solid, without the slight flicker that accompanied her brief appearance before, and she appears to be stable. Chloe wonders about alerting Dunning, but she works on the principle that if Eli sees the simulation program running in her quarters then someone will be charging in soon enough. For now she has a moment of respite to try and work out what the hell is going on. She moves towards her visitor, and as she does so, Gloria speaks.

"Chloe, I need your help."

X

Gloria's gone. As Nick finally comes back to himself from his breakdown, he dries his eyes and looks up, finding himself alone in the bridge. Part of him is glad that she finally got the message and left him alone, but a large part of him feels bereft and very alone. No doubt she'll be back soon enough, telling him to sleep, eat, generally take care of himself in a way he knows he's not doing but knows he can't afford to do yet. His head still aches as he gets shakily to his feet and goes back to the command chair, flipping open his notebook and beginning to work again. He keeps expecting to hear Gloria's voice at any moment. He can't believe he's actually missing her presence. Perhaps it's because, however much it might irritate him at the time, it is nice to know that he's got someone looking out for him, even if it is just Destiny itself playing with his mind. Someone's trying to take care of him, and as he always does, he's pushed them away. He sighs and rubs his temples. This is not the right time to be getting into deep philosophy. There's work to be done. Idly he wonders where Gloria is. Franklin, he is now becoming certain, is a physical manifestation of the man himself's consciousness, uploaded into the Destiny mainframe during his second and final stint in the chair. He has some degree of autonomy of thought akin to the actual Franklin. But Gloria... He can't figure out what she is, and why Destiny would choose her, of all people, as his guide through the bridge. Maybe it was when he was in the chair himself. He chose the memory of Gloria's passing because it was one he didn't mind if he forgot. One he would rather forget, as she had pointed out to him during those final few minutes. Maybe Destiny has picked up on the fact that he chose this memory, so full of Gloria, and it is using that against him. Or to help him. He still can't work out whether she's there as an aide or a hindrance. His head hurts too much to try and think about it.

 _I'm not your conscience, Nicholas_. The words echo in his ears and he tries to squash them down. They are hard truths that she is forcing him to confront when she speaks to him, ones that he knows all too well but would rather not think about and push away in the name of the greater good. It's much easier to get on when she's not there, but the truth does not go away just because she does.

He feels something warm and wet drip onto his hand, but he's not started weeping again. Looking down he sees the blood splatter on his skin and his hand goes automatically to his nose. It's streaming.

It's been a long time since he had a spontaneous nosebleed, not including the time in the chair (understandable due to the pounding his brain was taking), and naturally the times he's been hit in the face since arriving on Destiny. He tries not to think about those and leans back in the chair, trying to stem the flow. He's got nothing to clean up with so he'll have to leave and go on a mission to find tissue - hopefully avoiding the rest of the crew who will inevitably wonder whom he's pissed off now.

He closes his eyes, reminded of a time long before the Stargate program, when Gloria was recovering from her second course of chemo. She spent so much time sleeping, and he spent so much time working because he couldn't sleep whilst she was so out of it, worried that she'd have gone when he woke up. He gives a snort of ironic laughter. He's heard the rest of Destiny's crew take bets on how long his longest stint without sleep has been, but he doubts any of them will get close to the eighty-one hours and fourteen minutes he spent awake during that week when Gloria came home from the hospital. He's getting close to that now, and once again, without any intervention from Gloria pressing him to take a break, his body has decided that it just can't cope any more. He remembers the kitchen back home looking like a warzone, and a sleepy Gloria shuffling in wearing her pyjamas and not realising what had happened for a few moments. And then suddenly there was a cold, damp cloth over his face, and the blood was stopping.

"You're not meant to be the one taking care of me," he had muttered. Gloria had just smiled.

"Well, you're not going to take care of yourself, are you?" She had laughed and kissed his cheek. "Come to bed, my darling. Sleep. I'll still be here. I promise."

And she was, of course. He'd had no cause to fear.

Perhaps that's what's happening now, Nick thinks. His nose shows no sign of letting up. He was so scared of losing Gloria then, and he's so scared of losing Destiny now,  that he's simply not going to let it happen on his watch. As time goes on, the need to uncover its secrets for himself becomes more and more frantic. If he lets it alone for any length of time, the chance of it being discovered is ever greater, and he can't let that happen. Destiny has a purpose, a mission and an ultimate destination and he has to protect that from the rest of them who just won't understand the delicacy of what the ship is trying to do. He has to take care of this Ancient vessel, and do it properly, because no-one else is going to.

"You can't take care of me if you don't take care of yourself," Gloria's voice says in his memory, but it might as well be Destiny speaking to him. Oh, the irony. 

He's feeling slightly dizzy now, and his head is pounding. There are spots dancing in front of his eyes. He squeezes them tight shut and grates his teeth against the pain. Suddenly, all he wants is Gloria and a cold flannel.

"Gloria?" he asks, his voice thick and nasal. "Gloria, are you there?"

 _You need to sleep, Nicholas_. It's just a memory of her voice, she's not actually there. He knows he needs to sleep. His body definitely knows he needs to sleep. It's practically screaming at him to go to bed.

He can't fight the oblivion any more, and he sinks into it like sinking into a warm bath.

 _"That's it,"_ Gloria's voice soothes in his mind. _"Just relax. Destiny will still be here."_

The last thing he hears before unconsciousness welcomes him with open arms makes him wonder, but it's already too late.

_"Rush?"_

It sounds like Chloe's voice.


	3. Chapter 3

"Chloe, I need your help."

Chloe looks around her room.

"I'm not sure how much help I'll be in here, but I can try." She pauses. "May I ask, why me?"

Perhaps it's because she's the only other person on the ship who recognises the figure in front of her, but she's not entirely sure how Destiny knows that. Mind you, if it can get in their heads as thoroughly as it has evidently got inside Rush and Young's heads, then it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that it's got in her head as well. She's been in the chair after all, even if for less than a minute.

"Because you're the only one Nicholas would trust, and the only one with the ability to replicate what he has done."

Chloe nods. It makes sense. Comparatively, they've been through rather a lot together, and the brief insights that they've had into each other's minds do necessitate a certain level of trust. Rush is the only one who trusts her as she is now, with this alien presence taking over her mind. In a way it's strange that he's the only one who doesn't treat her any differently, considering she's becoming that which he has such awful nightmares about and still feels a debilitating fear of. She's unlocked so much new knowledge over the last few weeks of working on Rush's equations, and a small part of her wonders if maybe he's already set the seeds for her to do this with the puzzles he has been setting her - seemingly random equations that might have meaning after all. Is she now his back-up plan for situations like this? She doesn't mind, but it's not likely to get Young to trust either of them any further than he can spit, so the timing could perhaps have been better.

"He's in danger," Gloria continues. There's worry in her gentle face, and Chloe wonders just how much of her is Destiny and how much is residual memory dragged out of Rush's head for whatever reason.

"What from?" she asks.

The older woman's mouth quirks at the corner in the hint of a humourless smile. "Himself. What else?"

"Right." Chloe sits down on her bed and indicates for Gloria to take a seat beside her, not that she's entirely sure that the entity can sit down or interact with physical objects in any way. Nevertheless, Gloria takes the offered position and continues to give Chloe a worried look. Chloe takes a deep breath. Somewhere on Destiny, Rush has worked himself half to death, and Gloria, whatever she may be, needs the help of the one person who doesn't have free passage throughout the ship to rescue him. This isn't going to be difficult at all.

"Where is he?" Chloe asks, but she can already guess. He's behind that locked door that no-one can get through, and that's why the situation is so precarious. If he'd collapsed in a corridor somewhere then they'd be able to find him and treat him and smack some sense into him later. As it is, he's unconscious somewhere that no-one can get to him and make sure that he survives long enough to get yelled at for putting 'staying alive' at a lesser priority to 'working'.

No-one except Chloe, evidently.

"I think you know that already," Gloria says. Well, she's just as enigmatic as her husband, that's for sure, and it serves to confirm Chloe's theory that she's drawn out of Rush's mind.

“The mysterious door that no-one’s figured out how to open yet.” Chloe sighs as Gloria nods. “I don’t know how you and Rush are expecting me to get past that from in here.”

“You can calculate it,” Gloria replies calmly. “You’ve got the knowledge. Nicholas has faith in you.”

A small part of Chloe that isn’t despairing at the situation that she’s found herself in feels a small swell of pride at this praise. Rush has faith in her. Moreover he has faith in her now, at a time when no-one else trusts her. He trusts her with his life, quite literally it seems in this case.

All the same, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s given her by proxy a near impossible task.

“I might be able to do the math, given time, but I have no idea where to start,” she says. “I can’t get down there to take a look and I don’t have access to any of the data that Eli and the others are working with.”

“I can give you a start,” Gloria says. She reaches into the pocket of her cardigan and takes out a notebook, seemingly identical to Rush’s. Chloe half-reaches out to take it, then draws back her hand. Gloria gives her an apologetic look.

“It’s not real,” she says sheepishly. “Just like I’m not really real. It’s just memory, really. But the facts are real.”

Unperturbed, Chloe copies out the numbers and symbols into her diary and begins to work. It seems to be a cypher of sorts, and working it out will give her the combination to unlock the door. This must be the key starting point that the others down in the interface room are missing. She doesn’t want to think about how Rush found it, but considering her current circumstances with Gloria still sitting on her bed, she wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he received some great epiphany in the chair.

"Gloria," Chloe begins, and the other woman responds to her name. "I know you can't actually be Gloria, so I know you must be something that Destiny's projecting in some way, and I know that the only reason you'd be appearing in your current form is due to Destiny getting in Rush's head. So... what actually are you?"

"A bit of both, I suppose," Gloria says, watching Chloe work. "I would help if I could but the program doesn't work in that way," she adds, peering at the numbers.

Chloe nods, only half-listening as she calculates.

"When Nicholas was in the chair, he was using a portion of the simulation program to receive the information he needed, merging memory and simulation into something new," Gloria explains.

Chloe begins a new line of math, Ancient and English flowing into each other so seamlessly she can barely see the join where the two languages diverge. It makes sense to her so far, both the equations and the reasoning.

"That meant that some of his memories ended up in the simulation program," Gloria continues.

"So you're part Destiny, part Rush's memory?"

Gloria nods.

Chloe sits back on her haunches on the floor. "So that means, theoretically, that you know everything Destiny knows and everything Rush knows?"

"Not exactly. I'm created from a very small part of Rush's memory, not one associated with knowledge. The numbers mean nothing to me," she admits.

"Which part are you from, then?" Chloe asks.

Gloria gives a soft laugh.

"Guilt and conscience."

"That explains so much," Chloe mutters.

Suddenly there's a knock at the door.

"Are you all right?" Dunning asks through the metal.

"Just talking to myself," Chloe replies hastily.  "It helps me think."

She really doesn't want anyone to come in and interrupt this time with Gloria - it's easier to just call her Gloria since she seems to be such an amalgam of things that a technical name is impossible at the moment. As much as Destiny needs Chloe's help to rescue Rush, Chloe needs Destiny's help to do the same thing. A certain symbiosis. They've existed in this fragile state ever since they came to Destiny. They rely on this ship to keep them alive, and the ship relies on them to keep it going. She turns to the other woman and whispers:

“Can he hear you out there?”

Gloria shakes her head. “My sphere of influence is restricted,” she says.

Chloe raises an eyebrow. “You were bouncing around all over the ship earlier,” she points out. Although, to be fair, she hadn’t actually been interacting with any of them whilst she’d been doing that, just appearing and disappearing at random.

“Yes, I was spread a bit thin. This is all very new to me. It’s the first time I’ve really left the…” She pauses, catching herself before she can say something, and with a minute shake of her head she rephrases. “It’s the first time I’ve left Nicholas and gone looking for someone else.”

“Why did you do it?” Chloe asks.

“No-one else is going to take care of him,” Gloria says softly. “Least of all himself.”

Chloe doesn’t really have a response to that. It makes her sad in a way, that Rush feels he has no-one whom he can turn to on this ship, to the extent where the ship itself takes it upon itself to protect him. Symbiosis again. Rush’s priority has always been Destiny, keeping it safe and out of harm’s way, and now it’s returning the favour. She wonders how it sees them all, this great artificial intelligence that surrounds them. It’s already picked out Young as ‘leader’ and Rush as ‘caretaker’ and her as, nominally at least, ‘Rush’s next best thing to a caretaker’. She’s intrigued to know what it thinks of the others, so since she has nothing better for entertainment whilst she calculates, she asks.

“I’m not the right person to ask,” Gloria says. “My knowledge, my thoughts and feelings… They’re shaped predominantly by Nicholas’s memories of Gloria. What you see before you now, it bears his fingerprints.”

She's not really Destiny and she's not really Rush. She’s an accidental mish-mash of both of them.

“Why can’t you intervene?” Chloe asks her. “If you need us to get through that door to get to Rush, why can’t you – well, Destiny – just open it yourself?”

“Destiny’s on autopilot, not completely intuitive,” Gloria says, and Chloe has to smile because they’re Rush’s words out of her mouth, but all the same, she can tell the half-truth in them, and she wonders exactly what Gloria is hiding from her. It's true that whilst the ship tries to keep them alive as much as it can, there is a limit, and it never strays from its pre-recorded path for anything. Everything it does is a result of that autopilot, and that it helps the crew occasionally is something of a bonus. On the other hand... They know that Destiny has some sentience. Aside from its autopiloted course, does it just decide to intervene in their lives how and when it feels like it? If it's gone to the trouble of sending Gloria out to get help, why couldn't it just help itself? Something else is definitely at work here.

She decides not to press any further. She can already tell that it will be futile.

"How long have you been here?" she asks instead.

"The program has always been here," Gloria replies. "It just hasn't been active until now."

The fact that the activation seems to have coincided with Rush's numerous recent disappearances does not go unnoticed in Chloe's mind, but again she thinks better of mentioning it, and she concentrates on the numbers in front of her. She's even more determined to solve it now so that she can get to Rush and give him an earful about everything that he's been hiding from her, from all of them.

"So, are you going to stick around once we've rescued him?" Chloe asks, still not quite sure how Gloria is expecting her to get through the door even if she manages to crack the code. She's not quite sure which answer she wants to hear. Whilst it's quite nice to be able to interact with Destiny like this, the fact that this particular manifestation of Destiny is predominantly made from Rush's mind worries her somewhat, and the idea of the ship just popping up in various places to offer insight is rather disconcerting.

"I doubt it."

Chloe looks up at her.

“This is just another program,” Gloria continues. There’s a tinge of regret in her voice. “Nicholas will work out how to quarantine it off soon enough.”

“Why would he shut you down?” Chloe asks.

“I’m not particularly helpful,” Gloria replies. “Not helpful in the sense that he needs, at least.”

“Trying to take care of him and make sure he doesn’t die sounds pretty helpful to me,” Chloe mutters.

“Yes, but not to him. Besides, it’s not really fair to him, if you think about it. Would you want reminders of your dead spouse popping up to haunt you all the time? I said before, I’m created from guilt and conscience.”

Chloe nods her understanding. It can’t exactly be pleasant for Rush, even if she does think he needs it. Gloria gives a sad shrug. “That’s just the way it is. This is what the program got from him when he was linked to the ship. This is all it has to work with. So, like with everything else here, we make do.”

There's a knock on her door but before Chloe can do anything,  the door is opening and Eli is standing there, panting from having run the length of the ship from the control interface room to her quarters.

"Chloe I saw..." He stops on seeing Chloe cross-legged on the floor with her diary full of numbers and Gloria sitting calmly on the bed. "Well, that explains that."

"Hello Eli," Chloe says. "Shut the door please."

Eli steps into the room and closes the door behind him, unable to take his eyes off Gloria.

"I saw that the spike had stabilised into a version of the simulation program and that it was running in here," he says faintly.

"Eli, Gloria, Gloria, Eli."

"Hello, Eli," Gloria says presently. "Your abilities really are quite remarkable."

"Erm... Hi. And thank you." Eli looks from Gloria to Chloe, his expression a mixture of worry, fear, and disbelief.

"Hey, don't knock it," Chloe says. "It's probably the only praise from Rush you're going to get in the near future."

"Right..." Eli sits down across from her. "Chloe, what the hell is going on in here?"

"I've been chosen." Chloe laughs. "Don't ask, it'll take too long to explain and I'm nearly finished."

"Finished what?"

"Unlocking that door that no-one can unlock."

"Ok, and how did you manage that?"

"Well, I've got the key," Chloe replies. She pushes the book towards him and he quickly looks over the figures, giving a slow nod.

"Well, this would do it, but where did you get all this from?" Chloe gives Gloria a pointed look and Eli sighs. "I'm not going to ask, but you're going to tell me everything later. Both of you."

"That might be impossible, but we'll do our best." Chloe pauses and leans in, murmuring under her breath so that Gloria can't hear her. Well, she hopes that Gloria can't hear her; she's really not sure of the projection's abilities, linked as she is to the ship itself.

"Eli, Rush is in a bad way. I don't even know if he's conscious."

"Well, given the fact he hasn't turned up and isn't responding to death threats, that's unlikely," Eli hisses. "But not completely impossible."

"I've got this information for a reason. It's got to be me. I don't know what will happen if I just give you these equations and then Young and Scott and Greer storm in all guns blazing."

Eli sighs and gives a nod of understanding.

"The colonel's going to kill us," he says.

"We're not exactly lying to him. We're just... taking initiative upon ourselves."

Eli quirks an eyebrow.

"Rush is a bad influence on you."

"We can discuss that with him when he's compos mentis and not lost in the middle of the ship somewhere."

There's a long pause and Eli sighs.

"I can already tell I'm going to regret this. Come on."

They leave the room with Chloe's calculations, and Dunning falls into step behind them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IT'S BEEN 84 YEARS! Actually it's just short of two years since I last updated this fic, but I made it my mission to get it finished this month. So please enjoy this incredibly, incredibly belated update.

Eli's radio bursts into life just as they reach the door, and the sudden static startles Chloe, making her jump.

_"Eli, what are you doing?"_ It's Brody's voice. It makes sense that he and the rest of the science team are still trying to get through the door from the control interface room, and she knew that it would be too much to ask that they could get through this little adventure with no-one finding out what they were doing.

"Erm, Chloe thinks she's cracked the lock, so we're checking it out," Eli replies.

_"Ok, well, let us know what you find."_

For the moment, Chloe's really quite glad that Brody tends to stay on Rush's side rather than Young's whenever the need to take sides arises. Of course, that might all change within the next few minutes when they actually work out what Rush has been doing during his vanishing acts, but there's nothing to lose now. Dunning seems to be taking it all in his stride, seemingly happy to just go along with the geeks and make sure that Chloe doesn't do anything strange and alien, but presumably Eli's presence is acting as a reassurance that she's not about to start sabotaging the ship. And who knows, maybe they will need some military back-up. For a terrifying moment Chloe has visions of aliens - any aliens, not necessarily the blue ones of her nightmares - having infiltrated the ship and taken advantage of Rush's unconscious brain. She pushes the thoughts aside and peers at the door control panel, then down at her notes, then back, and she begins to key in the code that will hopefully override the lock and take them through into this new section of the ship.

"Wait," Eli says before she can enter the final symbol, and he speaks into his radio again. "Brody, it's all pressurised beyond here, isn't it?"

_"Well if Rush is down there I would hope so,"_ Brody replies dryly. _"Or this search party might come to a very sudden end."_ There's a pause. _"We don't know, Eli. We have no idea what's down there, that's the point. It's a dark section on the schematics."_

"Well, here goes nothing." Eli holds onto the wall for dear life and Dunning does the same. Chloe enters the final symbol. It's going to be all right. She knows it is; Gloria told her that Rush was here so obviously it's all going to be fine.

The door slides open and, as expected, nothing happens.

_"Well, you're in and you're not dead,"_ Brody's voice says. He's so matter of fact about the whole thing. _"Now, where's Rush?"_

It's clear that this part of the ship is unlike any they've uncovered before and they're probably going to get into a lot of trouble with Young for exploring dark sections of the ship without all the proper authorisation and communication, but for the moment Chloe is taking a leaf out of Rush's book. Hopefully he'll appreciate the risks they're taking to save his neck.

"Woah." For a moment that's all Eli can say as they enter this brand-new room. He speaks to Brody again. "I think we just found the bridge."

_“You’ve done what?”_ Brody exclaims. He sounds like he can’t decide between being impressed that they’ve found it, unable to believe that they’re telling the truth, outraged that Rush appears to have found it first and not told them, and annoyed that he’s not actually there with them making this discovery for himself.

“Hold on, I’m getting a kino down here.” Eli fiddles with his portable console, but Chloe pushes past him into the room. They came into this room for a reason, because they need to find Rush and according to Gloria, this is where he is and he’s not in a good way. She steps down from the mezzanine and immediately she sees what it is that they’re here for. A kino zooms past her, mapping the room, but Chloe ignores it, going over to the slumped figure on the floor in a pool of blood. Rush is unconscious but breathing, although he’s an absolutely ghastly colour and the blood smeared all over his face from his still oozing nose is worrying to say the least.

“Eli!” she yells. “Stop messing about with that and help me!”

She grabs Rush’s shoulder, shaking him roughly. “Rush? Rush! Wake up!”

There’s no response, not that she really expected one.

“Right,” Eli says as he and Dunning come down and crouch beside her. “Well, we’ve found him.”

“What’s left of him,” Dunning says, utterly unhelpfully, and Chloe just glares at him.

“Is it even possible to lose that much blood out of your nose?” Eli yelps. “No, no, don’t answer that, I know. I’ll get a kino sled and we’ll get him to TJ. Rush, you know, you’re going to be in so much trouble when you wake up that you might want to stay asleep for a couple of weeks to let everyone get over it.” He glances around the bridge again as he calls up a kino sled. “I can’t believe he found it and never told us.”

Chloe can. She knows enough about Rush to know that he doesn’t trust anyone with anything, and he would want to make sure he’s got everything he possibly can out of this place before the military come in and shut down his investigation. She can’t say that she approves of his keeping such huge secrets in their perilous position, but she knows why he does it.

“This is Rush,” Dunning points out.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. So, what happened?” Eli looks up at the command chair that it looks like Rush was sitting in until he collapsed. “Do you think that fried his brain like the interface chair?”

“I don’t think so. Although maybe we shouldn’t touch anything until we can find out what it all does.”

“Probably a good plan.”

Dunning is off radioing Young and TJ and everyone else who needs to know what’s happened, and Chloe is left sitting on the floor beside Rush. She feels the overwhelming need not to leave him alone for any length of time. They’ve always helped each other through their most vulnerable moments in the past, and now Destiny itself has chosen her to be his protector throughout this time full of unknowns. Part of her wants to be the first one to grab him and shake him and ask him what the hell he’s playing at, but another part knows that he’s going to need an ally to get through whatever it is that’s in store for him and that ally may as well be her because there’s no-one else who can do it and Gloria, being a semi-sentient mash-up of Destiny’s computer programs and Rush’s memories, isn’t exactly going to be a great advocate.

Eli’s kino sled arrives, with Young, Scott and TJ in short order afterwards, and then everything’s just a mess of questions and shouting and everyone trying to explain what’s going on at once. Thankfully TJ is more concerned with her patient than anything else, and works with Chloe to get him on to the sled and get him stable. Above them, Eli is pointing out that no-one except Rush knows anything about this place and if Rush dies on them now, then no-one will know anything about it. Young is torn between closing this door again until Rush is conscious and able to tell them what the hell is going on, and getting Eli to start work on deciphering this command room straight away, and hopefully fixing anything that Rush has broken. Beside Chloe, TJ sighs.

“So many things to think about, so many things to try and prioritise, so many people to yell at.”

Chloe doesn’t envy Young’s position, and she really wishes that sometimes Rush trusted someone other than himself. It would make life a lot easier for all of them.

TJ looks up at the rest of the crew gathered in the room. “Look, I don’t know how all this came about any more than you do. The only person who can tell us is Rush, and if I don’t get him to the infirmary where I can stabilise and monitor him, then he’s not going to be able to tell us anything.”

She leaves the bridge with the kino sled, and since no-one tells her not to, Chloe follows on, and Dunning follows Chloe like a little guard dog. Young’s not at all pleased to see her out of her room, but since she’s not doing anything suspicious and she’s currently supervised, he’s got bigger fish to fry at that point. Namely the fact that Rush has yet again been manipulating things from behind the scenes. She glares down at his unconscious face. She knows she’s probably the closest thing to a friend that he has on board the ship, the ship itself notwithstanding, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be mad at him for being so, well, _Rush_.

“Is he going to be ok?” she asks TJ. “Eli was worried that something in the bridge had scrambled his brains.” Chloe doesn’t personally think that, because she’s had insider knowledge from Destiny as to what’s been going on, but it can’t hurt to be sure.

“I think he’s just exhausted,” TJ says. “I’ll take a closer look at him when we get him back to the infirmary.” She snorts. “At least if he wakes up in the infirmary then Young won’t hit him.” She turns to Chloe. “How’d you find him, anyway?”

“I…” It’s so complicated, but everyone in the ship knows that Gloria was bouncing around everywhere looking for help earlier, so perhaps it won’t be as hard to explain as it might otherwise be. “Destiny gave me a clue. It showed me how Rush got into the bridge and figured I could replicate it.”

TJ just nods; she’s been studying Chloe’s gradual transformation and is well aware of her enhanced mental abilities by now.

“The ship must care more than we think,” she says quietly. “We were all sceptical after it set about testing Young, but it knew Rush needed help and set out to get some.” They’ve reached the infirmary by this point and TJ gives a little shrug. “I guess that gives me hope that it’s not going to turn around and suddenly kill us all at any given moment.”

She sets about using what tools she can to try and determine Rush’s state, and now that she’s sort of saved the day, Chloe feels somewhat redundant.

“Is there anything I can do?” She hopes that there’s something. She really doesn’t want TJ to send her back to her room. Gloria chose her as an ally for Rush, and she feels like she’ll be letting the ship down if she isn’t there when he wakes up.

TJ hesitates for a moment, then brings over a cloth and some water.

“You can clean him up a bit.”

Grateful for any task that will keep her occupied whilst her mind is dreading what comes next, Chloe begins to wipe the dried blood out of Rush’s beard.

X

Everything is warm, and calm, and dark, and for a brief moment Rush wonders if he has actually worked himself to death like Gloria had feared he would. He’ll be annoyed if he has. He had far too much left to do and now none of it is going to get realised to its full potential.

He’s grateful for the respite from his headache though, the one that has been constantly plaguing him and telling him to go to sleep even more effectively than Gloria has been doing.

Speaking of Gloria though… He had wanted her to go away because she was being unhelpful, but right now, some company would be nice.

“Gloria?” he calls out into the blackness. “Gloria, are you there? Where are you?”

_“I’m here, my love,”_ her voice says, somewhere in the back of his mind without going in through his ears. _“I’ve always been here.”_

He doesn’t know what this is. Before, he knew that Gloria was actually Destiny messing with his head. All the memories that she talked about were his own, not hers. She was just a simulation program working with what it got from him when he was in the chair. It is a very clever program, he’ll give her that much, but ultimately it is just a program. Now though… Now he doesn’t know whether he’s alive or dead and therefore Gloria’s voice in his head is something entirely different. Maybe she’s a hallucination brought on by lack of oxygen, or something similar.

_“Chloe’s coming,”_ Gloria tells him. _“You’re going to be ok.”_

Rush remembers hearing Chloe’s voice before he surrendered into oblivion, and he wonders what’s going on out there in the outside world, in Destiny. Grimly, it occurs to him that if he wakes up from this escapade, he’s going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble. Maybe it would be better to stay here in the warm and dark for a while until it all blows over. Not that it’s likely to all blow over in a hurry.

“How’s Chloe going to get in here?” he asks, because presumably, wherever his consciousness is floating now, his body hasn’t moved from the place where it last was.

_“The same way you did. Destiny’s linked to you, remember. It knows what you know, it just can’t process it the same way that you do. Chloe is the only one who can. So it gave her what she needed.”_

Gloria is Destiny, she is a part of this ship, and it’s unnerving to hear her speak of it as if it’s something separate. Then again, his mind’s not on the bridge anymore, and he can’t keep trying to convince himself that the voice he’s hearing is a simulation. Maybe this is death. He’s never really believed in anything after life, but he knows that Gloria did. She’d definitely gone somewhere else when they lowered her down into the muddy ground, just a shell, all that made her Gloria long gone.

“This isn’t real,” he says.

_“Now that’s something you’ll never be able to prove. Not till you get here permanently.”_

“I’m not dead then.”

_“No. You’re not dead. I’m the one that’s dead, Nicholas. You’re just in very bad shape.”_

There’s silence for a long time, and it’s blissful and pain-free.

_“You can’t stay here, Nicholas,”_ Gloria says eventually, and even though he can only hear her voice in the back of his head, he can still vaguely feel her presence. A fleeting glimpse of images flickers through his mind; is this what they mean when they say that your life flashes before your eyes when you die? Except he’s not dead, Gloria just told him so. But since she is dead and can’t be talking to him… He’s very confused. In his memory, Gloria smiles at him from beneath her wedding veil.

_“Rush?”_

That’s Chloe’s voice, very far away and indistinct, but it’s calling him, pulling him back to the light.

_“Go,”_ Gloria says. _“You have too much to do to give in to your own stubbornness now, Nicholas. You know where you can find me if you need me.”_

“It’s not you, though,” Rush protests, thinking of Destiny’s simulation, pulled from his own memories and so lifelike, but not real.

Gloria does not reply. He can’t hear Chloe’s voice either. Everything’s grey, and numb, and foggy, and Rush struggles feebly towards consciousness, knowing that there’s too much at stake for him to lose it all now.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Chloe sits by Rush’s bed in the infirmary. TJ has given him the all clear, they just have to wait for him to wake up and get some fluids into him. He looks a lot less like he’s at death’s door now that he’s not covered in blood. It’s obvious that he needs the sleep, so they’re not too worried about waking him up prematurely. Well, the only person who particularly wants to wake him up prematurely is Young, and that’s probably only because he wants to be angry at him. Scratch that, Young _is_ angry at Rush, furiously and incandescently so, because now that the science team have got inside the bridge and started going over its controls with a fine toothed comb, it’s clear that Rush has had control for a while now, and the colonel wonders just how much of what has happened in recent weeks could have been prevented if he had decided to share that information with them rather than keeping it to himself. Whilst Rush is unconscious, however, there’s not a lot that Young can do in terms of shouting at him, so he’s taking his frustrations out by pacing up and down the infirmary and occasionally talking to TJ in a harsh whisper that Chloe knows he doesn’t mean for her to hear. He’s not at all happy at her being out of confinement and it seems like he’s even less happy that she’s in here with Rush. From what he’s been saying, he now suspects some kind of a conspiracy between the two of them, and Chloe just rolls her eyes.

Thankfully, whilst TJ wants to smack Rush for keeping the bridge a secret just as much as the rest of them do, she does have Chloe’s back in these arguments, calmly explaining everything that points to Chloe being just as unaware as the rest of them. Young accepts this begrudgingly and resumes his pacing, giving Rush’s comatose body black looks every now and then.

“Colonel, he’s not going to wake up any quicker with you staring at him all the time,” TJ says. “I think that you might be better served elsewhere. I’m sure that the science team will have something to report on the bridge by now. I know you want to yell at him the moment he wakes up, we all do, but with respect, sir, I don’t think there’s a lot to be gained from waiting for that to happen. I’ll call you as soon as he’s awake.”

Young seems to accept this and leaves the infirmary, and the tension in the air immediately lessens to slightly more bearable levels. Chloe looks over at Rush again.

“You’re in so much trouble,” she says conversationally. She wonders if there is something that she ought to be doing, rather than just sitting here. It’s not like she has any duties to perform around the ship that she would be doing instead; she’d just be swapping sitting in the infirmary under military guard to sitting in her room under military guard, so it’s a change of scenery if nothing else. “I think people are going to start lining up to try and kill you soon. You’re lucky I’m here, really.” She doesn’t necessarily want to kill him, but she does want to ask him what the hell he thought he was playing at in keeping them all in the dark for so long.

It’s strange. Chloe’s hand hovers over Rush’s, unsure whether to take it or not. That this strange sequence of events has connected them is irrefutable. They’d had some kind of connection at the hands of their Nakai nightmares before, but the very fact that Destiny itself seems to think that they’re connected has resonance somewhere in the back of Chloe’s mind. The ship wants them to stick together and help each other, and something in her head really wants to listen to it. She knows she’s thinking like Rush now, that the ship is so much older and bigger than the both of them and it does things for a reason, so they probably ought to respect it. She thinks back to what TJ said, about the ship actually caring about them. Maybe it’s caring about her too, giving her excuses and ways to get out and about during her solitary confinement.

She closes her hand over Rush’s. It’s the kind of thing that people do in medical dramas when their terribly ill or injured loved ones are in a critical condition and it’s touch and go for them. It’s not touch and go for Rush, so much. She just knows that there’s no-one else who would do it for him. It’s like Gloria said when she first appeared in her quarters.

_No-one else is going to take care of him. Least of all himself._

Whatever strange thing binds them together, whatever link that Destiny has sensed between them, whether as a result of Chloe’s transformation or their shared trauma or something deeper and less definable, it’s there to stay. They are never going to see eye to eye about everything, in fact they’re probably not going to see eye to eye about practically anything, but no matter how much Chloe might want to yell at him, she knows that they understand each other, and perhaps they’re the only people on the ship who share that peculiar level of understanding.

“Thank you.”

Chloe looks up and startles when she sees Gloria standing there. She glances over at TJ, but Gloria shakes her head.

“No, she can’t see me.” There’s a pause. “Eli is running diagnostics on the simulation program from the bridge. I don’t know how long I have. Young wants him to shut it off to prevent any more incidents.”

Well, considering that the simulation program nearly caused Young to have a breakdown when it started testing his leadership skills, Chloe can understand his reluctance to have it running in the background and possibly causing mass hallucinations in his crew. All the same, it makes Chloe wonder.

“So what happens if Rush works himself half to death again?”

Gloria shrugs, perching on the edge of the bed beside her husband. “He’ll just have to accept that he can’t rely on Destiny taking care of him anymore, and he’ll maybe have to take some responsibility for his own wellbeing.”

Her tone is almost motherly, and knowing that she is the ship’s mouthpiece who has taken this view, it makes Chloe laugh. Even Destiny is exasperated by Rush’s workaholic tendencies.

“I did keep telling him to go to sleep,” Gloria continues. “You can imagine how he took that advice. Most of our interactions consisted of me telling him to stop working and him telling me to be quiet.”

Chloe gives a huff of laughter, and she knows what this is building up to. If Destiny can’t take care of Rush, for whatever reason, then this task is going to fall to her. She finds she doesn’t mind. Everyone needs someone to have their back, even Rush, and maybe if he realises that he has a friend and someone looking out for him all the time, then he won’t feel the need to be so damn secretive and manipulative all the time, if he has someone he knows he can trust.

“What if we need you again?” she asks. “I mean, if you’re a manifestation of Destiny itself, then you might be useful to have around.”

Gloria shakes her head. “Not like this. Not this particular form, this shape. I’m too shaped by Rush. But Franklin’s still here too. He’s more likely to provide practical assistance.”

“Franklin?” So that’s where he went when he vanished in the chair. He was uploaded into Destiny’s mainframe.

“Yes. According to Nicholas he’s far more useful than I am.”

They fall into silence for a while, and Chloe takes a few minutes to study the pair of them, Rush’s memories of Gloria watching over him faithfully. It makes her think, just how much Gloria’s death must have affected him, for her to be such a large part of his subconscious now. She remembers the conversation that led to her first realising that Gloria even existed.

“He loves you,” she says. Even though it’s not Gloria and she’s just a construct taking this form for expediency’s sake, it feels important to say it.

Gloria smiles. “I know.”

They fall into silence again. Gloria’s presence seems to be fading, as if it’s taking more and more energy for her to stay here in this form. Whatever Eli’s doing to the simulation program, it’s obviously taking its toll.

“Thank you for rescuing him,” she says presently. “Please keep him safe for me whilst I can’t.”

“I can’t decide whether to hug him or kick his ass,” Chloe mutters. Gloria laughs.

“Don’t worry, that’s a sentiment I can well understand. He’s always been like that.”

Chloe snorts. “Well, at least you admitting it means that he admits it himself. I think.”

Gloria smiles. “Something like that.”

She leans over and kisses Rush gently on the forehead, but Chloe can’t tell if she actually makes contact or not.

“You know where I am if you need me,” she whispers to him, and then she’s gone, and Chloe knows that she won’t be coming back, not unless someone does something to activate the simulation program again. From what Gloria said earlier, back in her room when she was decoding the bridge door, that doesn’t seem likely.

Beside her, Rush twitches as he comes to.

“Glo?” he mumbles.

Chloe shakes her head. “Close, but no cigar. Chloe.”

“Gloria?”

“No. Just me. Sorry.”

He opens bloodshot, weary eyes and looks up at her.

“Gloria was here,” he says. “I heard her.”

“Yeah, she was. She’s gone now, though. I think Eli’s quarantined the program.” Chloe glances over at TJ on the other side of the infirmary; she must have twigged that Rush is awake again but she’s being very good at pretending obliviousness and giving him some time to come round fully before she sics Young on him. Rush nods, and Chloe wonders if he’ll miss her, the simulation who wasn’t really his wife, created from his own memories, his own guilt.

“You were there,” he says. “I heard you. When…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, but Chloe can fill in the gaps for him. Suddenly, he’s much more alert, looking around himself, as if he’s just realised that he’s not where he was when he passed out.

“Where am I?”

“Infirmary.”

“How did I get here?”

“Kino sled. TJ and I didn’t feel like carrying you all the way here.”

Even looking like death warmed over, he can still give a pretty good ‘don’t be an idiot’ glare, but Chloe just laughs.

“I cracked the code to get into the bridge and came to rescue you from yourself. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Thank you.” There’s a long pause as reality dawns, and Rush grimaces. “Ah.”

“Yeah, I think ‘ah’ is putting it mildly,” Chloe says. “Young’s about ready to throw you out of an airlock and the rest of us aren’t that far behind. I take it you’ve got some kind of explanation?”

“I do, but my head hurts too much to go into detail right now.”

“Here.” TJ comes over with a cup of water and Rush manages to lever himself into a sitting position and drink. “Not only are you ridiculously exhausted, you’re also even more dehydrated than the rest of us. Now, I promised I’d call Young as soon as you woke up, but I figure I’ll give you a while to make sure you’re fully compos mentis and have all your excuses and explanations lined up before he comes down here.”

Rush nods his appreciation, a little cowed. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet, you haven’t seen him.”

TJ leaves them alone again then.

“How did you get into the bridge?” Rush asks.

“Gloria helped me. She gave me all the calculations that you’d already done and I was able to work out the rest of it.”

He nods, slowly.

“You know, part of me is really quite worried about how connected you are to this ship,” she points out. “The fact that it can tell when you’re about to keel over and takes it upon itself to get a rescue party together is remarkable.” She raises an eyebrow. “You know, I really think Destiny likes you.”

Rush scoffs, but his expression is thoughtful, and he doesn’t speak for a while. When he does, his words are not at all what Chloe expects.

“You spoke to Gloria.”

“Yes. Well, whatever the strange simulation-come-AI hologram, manifestation of Destiny’s sentience all tied up a bow of your borrowed memories type thing that Gloria is. I find it easier just to call her Gloria.”

“I see.” He pauses again, still lost in thought. “I wonder why she chose you.”

It’s a rhetorical question, and whilst Chloe could see it as an insult, she doesn’t think it is.

“Alien brain to the rescue,” she says. “Super blue knowledge needed to crack open doors.”

They both know that it’s not that, not really, but at the moment, they lack the same depth of understanding of each other that Destiny has of them both. The tentative friendship that they have formed over the past few months has solidified into something now. The past few hours have seen to that, and Chloe feels that she owes it to Gloria - not just the simulation she interacted with but the memory of the woman herself, a person she never met and only knows through another person’s memories - to honour these changing circumstances and take care of Rush in the same roundabout, Rush-like way that he keeps an eye out for her.

“Chloe.” TJ is coming back. “I think it would be best if you went back to your room now.”

Chloe has to agree, because as much as she wants to stick by Rush, she can’t do that if she doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, and being here when Young comes in is probably just going to get the both of them in trouble. Rush nods.

“I can handle Young,” he says, and Chloe just raises an eyebrow.

“Of course you can.”

“If I’m still able to walk after the friendly chat that we’re no doubt about to have, I’ll come and see you,” he says. There’s still a lot for them to talk about, the things that they share that no-one else could even come close to understanding. First their abduction and escape, then the nightmares that continued to link them, and now this final attempt by Destiny to bring them together in an alliance. It’s not something that can be ignored.

“Oh no you won’t,” TJ mutters. “You’re staying where I can keep an eye on you. I don’t want to find you collapsed in a corridor in a couple of hours because you’re too stubborn to admit you’re human.”

Rush huffs, and Chloe laughs, and TJ gives a long-suffering sigh before radioing Dunning to come and escort Chloe back to her quarters and Young to say Rush is ready for the third degree. As she leaves the infirmary, Chloe thinks she gets the briefest glimpse of Gloria out of the corner of her eye, but when she turns, the image is gone.

As worrying a thought as the ship keeping tabs on them is, it is nice to know that it’s taking care of them, and making sure that they take care of each other.

 


End file.
